European Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, set the stage for discussions on the potential for space to support security at a conference entitled “Space for European Resilience: rising to the collective challenge“, citing the importance of secure intelligence, secure positioning, and secure communications and connectivity.
The activity was organized under the auspices of the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union, and with the support of the European Commission, by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI).
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher presented the European Resilience from Space program, a new optional program that will be open for subscriptions from Member States at next month’s ESA Ministerial Council. The proposed system would integrate remote sensing, connectivity, PNT (positioning, navigation and timing), spectrum monitoring, and Internet of Things (IoT) systems, with the aim of providing users with the most secure, agile, and rapid response capabilities possible.
The European Resilience from Space program, to be proposed in Bremen on November 26 and 27, 2025, constitutes the first programmatic pillar supporting the future Earth Observation Governmental Service (EOGS) of the European Union. This service is aimed at providing highly reactive, dual-use, independent space-based Earth observation capabilities to deliver rapid, reliable, and secure data, products and services.
ESA Directorates central to the proposal were represented by Director of Earth Observation Simonetta Cheli and Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications, Laurent Jaffart.
The future role of space for security will be further described in the EU budget being decided under the Multiannual Financial Framework 2028-2034, in addition to the funding decisions to be made at ESA’s Ministerial Council. This event follows the success of the 3rd ESA Security Conference, hosted in Warsaw under the auspices of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU in April 2025.
The ESA Director General said, “In this moment of rapid change, there is a critical need to synchronise European initiatives by aligning space for defence competencies, avoiding duplication and pooling resources for scale. We still remain too fragmented to guarantee Europe with genuine, comprehensive and autonomous space resilience. We have an opportunity to change that, and we must.”
